LAMONT, Okla.  For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.

Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.

Yet in recent years, the climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us.

They acknowledge that the human release of greenhouse gases will cause the planet to warm. But they assert that clouds  which can either warm or cool the earth, depending on the type and location  will shift in such a way as to counter much of the expected temperature rise and preserve the equable climate on which civilization depends.

Their theory exploits the greatest remaining mystery in climate science, the difficulty that researchers have had in predicting how clouds will change. The scientific majority believes that clouds will most likely have a neutral effect or will even amplify the warming, perhaps strongly, but the lack of unambiguous proof has left room for dissent.

Clouds really are the biggest uncertainty, said Andrew E. Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M. If you listen to the credible climate skeptics, theyve really pushed all their chips onto clouds.

Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the leading proponent of the view that clouds will save the day. His stature in the field  he has been making seminal contributions to climate science since the 1960s  has amplified his influence.

“Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working scientists now see that the Sun orbits the Earth.” - New York Times Editorial in Response to Geocentric Deniers such as Galileo Galilei, 1615.

There are no skeptics on climate change. Everybody acknowledges that climate has changed in the past and it will continue to change.

The skepticism is over the human contribution to global warming, if it is even occurring, and if it what the consequences (good and bad) are, and how quickly they would occur.

Now it’s been about twenty years or more since they’ve been making all types of catastrophic predictions with none of them coming true, even though the amount of CO2 in the air has increased significantly with the industrialization of India, China, Brazil etc. THAT is the warmists biggest problem. Even Lovelock (the founder of Gaia) has come to accept that reality.

How long before the knuckleheads of the NYT come to that realization? I won’t hold my breath, because for the NYT it’s about politics not science.

Forget the clouds for a moment. What about the ice cores that debunked the CO2 increases predates global temperature increases? No. Not good enough to spur doubt?

How about we go back to the climate models from the 1980s and 1990s that Hanson presented to Congress. The global temperatures, ocean temperatures and sea levels are all WAY below his “Best case scenario” if we would have taken draconian measures to counter global warming back then.

We now have 30 years of data post the invention of “climate modeling.” Every single prediction of 10, 20 and 30 years dating back to 2000 is proved horrifically wrong. They are all off by more than 100%. Still not enough to say there is reason for debate?

The global temperatures measure by satellites put in orbit in the 1980s to measure global temperatures have been recording some pretty significant and consistent data. I would ask Hanson and corp to provide me a report of this data and an explanation for why the earth has almost completely stopped warming while the CO2 emissions have gone up even more than they predicted back when the satellites were put in orbit to monitor the global temperatures.

There is a simple case to be made for challenging the science. There is a strong case that their computer modeling schemes are false. There is absolute empirical proof that more money, regulation and taxation will not affect or prevent the warming of our planet.

Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence

Would that be the tampered with East Anglia evidence?Or the real historical data that East Anglia destroyed?Or the falsified NASA evidence?Or the faulty NOAA evidence?Or the fabricated "hide the decline" Penn State statistical evidence?

19
posted on 05/01/2012 10:54:05 AM PDT
by Drill Thrawl
(The United States of America, a banana republic since 1913)

The propagandists at NYT grazed tangentially upon one point - referring to the cloud cover - then the carom took them clear away.

What are clouds? Water vapor. What is water vapor? Only the single vastly most important “greenhouse” gas in our atmosphere, anywhere from 30 to 100 times as important as carbon dioxide, which lacks one very important characteristic compared to water vapor - under normal atmospheric conditions, CO2 exists only as a gas, while H2O can exist simultaneously in a gas, a solid, and a liquid state.

The effect of clouds is two-fold, both as a reflective surface that sends at least a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum back into space, and also as a heat-transfer medium from the earth’s surface, as the liquid form, water, evaporates, or the solid form, ice, sublimates, absorbing huge amounts of heat from the surroundings. Upon rising in the atmosphere, the water vapor gives up all this heat energy, either becoming water droplets, or very fine ice crystals. The heat energy is radiated off to space on the side of the earth turned away from the sun during the 24-hour day cycle.

After cooling, the now heavier-than-air liquid water or solid ice fall back to earth as precipitation, rain, snow, or in special conditions, hail or sleet.

This was all explained in my sixth-grade science class. Don’t know how all these highly trained atmospheric scientists missed that, but then, the quality of education has fallen off in the past sixty years or so.

23
posted on 05/01/2012 11:03:51 AM PDT
by alloysteel
(It is hard to get a man to understand, when his pay depends upon his not understanding something.)

1 - Define “climate scientist”
2 - Why would anyone claiming to represent “science” present a “poll” rather than scientific data to defend their position?
3 - The reason “skeptics” use clouds to disprove the claims of CO2 “causing” climate change, is because water vapor is the most significant variable, with regard to temperature change. It is both the most significant variable and the most difficult to model. This makes the study of any CO2 impact, almost impossible to measure.

What, I wonder, is a “climate scientist?” It doesn’t shock me that the preponderance of scientists who identify themselves as such would take “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” as a given. When all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail.

30
posted on 05/01/2012 11:28:31 AM PDT
by Tallguy
(It's all 'Fun and Games' until somebody loses an eye!)

NYT Reporter Justin Gillis Does it Again! Author of ‘Worst NYT Story on Climate Ever’ — gets even worse!
‘Gillis has officially reduced himself to the equivalent of a newsletter writer for climate pressure groups. Just when you thought his reporting cannot get any worse, he surprises us again’

But for more than a decade, Dr. Lindzen has said that when surface temperature increases, the columns of moist air rising in the tropics will rain out more of their moisture, leaving less available to be thrown off as ice, which forms the thin, high clouds known as cirrus. Just like greenhouse gases, these cirrus clouds act to reduce the cooling of the earth, and a decrease of them would counteract the increase of greenhouse gases.

Dr. Lindzen calls his mechanism the iris effect, after the iris of the eye, which opens at night to let in more light. In this case, the earths iris of high clouds would be opening to let more heat escape.

Gee, a negative feedback loop! Who woulda thunk it? It's too bad the NY Times' writer started the article with so much agitprop. I'm sure plenty of readers stopped right there.

I was participating in “picking a fight in a mental ward” with some resident libs over on youtube,
and none of them seemed to want to respond to the idea that “climate scientists” who dissented from the politically correct AGW theory would not get their next research grant.

But, the residents were quick to claim that the dissenting scientists were all paid for by corporations & big oil.

35
posted on 05/01/2012 12:50:37 PM PDT
by MrB
(The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter knows whom he's working for)

Last bastion? We have lots of bastions: glaciers/ice cap, bad control of measuring stations, manipulation of historic data by messing with time spans, faking of data, hiding of data. We are dissenting from the reports, not denying the truth.

One nitpick: true water vapor is invisible. If you can see it then it is no longer water vapor nor a greenhouse gas. It has condensed into liquid droplet form which has very different properties.

The highly biased NYT article neglects to mention how man can influence how clouds form. By adding a small amount of inert particulates to the air we can increase cloud formation if we want to.

Leftists advocate for most humans to die off. We cause them too much envious grief. So which is it? Do they want to sustain human life so it prospers or do they want most of us to go? They can't have it both ways.

Darn right that their computer modeling schemes are false. Back when the Cimategate documents were released, one of the documents provided a vector of “fudge factors” used by one of the models to recompute actual temperature data to ensure that the desired “my God, manmade Global Warming is out of control” results were obtained.

For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.

Actually, that's the exact reverse of what has gone on.

The global warming/AGW crowd has made up lie after lie, claiming this or that based on nothing -- and when their claims have been studied scientifically, the data show unequivocably that they are wrong. Every single time. So they make up another lie while ignoring the findings. And of course, their media shills carry their water.

1) Propose Hypothesis. 2) Poll. 3) Attack all Responders that did not Agree with the Hypothesis as Ignorant Heretics. 4) Discard Poll Responses that do not Agree with the Hypothesis. 5) Re-Poll only those who Responded Correctly the First Time. 6) Science determined by Poll Results.

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